p>It is unfortunate that, the violent racial riots
in Ferguson and Baltimore, that occurred after the death of clearly innocent
Black youth, has diverted the public debate to 'need for better policing'. The
casualty has been obfuscation more fundamental issues like; century-old public
policy of systematic social segregation, increasing economic inequality, and
wholesale abdication by the state of social welfare obligations

Century-Old Systematic Segregation

According to The University of Chicago's sociologist, Douglas S.
Massey, "Housing segregation is both a consequence and a cause of Black
poverty. Housing
markets distribute not only a place to live, but they also distribute wealth in
the form of home equity, education, the peer environment and exposure to
crime,"

In 1910, a Black Yale Law School graduate
purchased a home, in a previously all-White neighborhood in Baltimore. The
alarmed city fathers promptly issued an ordinance adopting residential segregation, thereby restricting African-Americans to designated
blocks.

- Advertisement -

This was overturned in 1917, when the U.S.
Supreme Court found the Baltimore ordinances unconstitutional by restricting
the property rights of White homeowners to sell to whomever they wished.
Baltimore immediately formed an official Committee on Segregation, which
through building and health departments, persuaded real estate industry and White
community organizations, to apply pressure to any Whites tempted to sell or
rent to Blacks. Members of the city's real estate board, for example,
accompanied building and health inspectors to warn property owners not to
violate the city's color line. Neighborhood residential associations made it
impossible for isolated White property owners to sell or rent their property to
Non-White customers. Developers could access subsidized housing loans, only if
they gave an undertaking that they would not sell their properties to Blacks.

Moving on to 1945 and the end of the Second
World War, that brought home war veterans, who needed housing. One such
returning unit had, 20% African-Americans who were housed alongside their White
fellow men, with whom they had lived and fought, looking after each other's
backs day and night. The very next day, all hell broke loose. Four hundred policemen
were trying to keep at bay a White mob of 1500 men, some of them being their
own fellowmen in uniforms. Fifteen days of the struggle that occurred, drove
the African-American families to make their way elsewhere.

In 1995, a housing lawyer from Johannesburg,
South Africa, visited Baltimore to study; how to 'undo'
racial segregation?, merits of integrated neighborhoods, the constitutional
right to choose where to live, and the role of the government in ensuring, equal
opportunities and fair housing practices. Soon, he realized to his great
disappointment, that Baltimore was no different than his native land,
Johannesburg, when it came to a deliberate and intentional residential
segregation. Real-estate agencies ''steering'' and the banks were
''red-lining'' the Blacks with almost identical indifference.

- Advertisement -

The Kerner Prophecy

During the
years 1965 to 1968, America witnessed a huge eruption of over 300, race related
disturbances, in across 200 cities and towns. Distressed by this unprecedented
upsurge of mass fury, which needed federal troops at some places to establish
peace, the then President, Lyndon Johnson, set up an enquiry commission
formally known as the National Advisory Commission
on Civil Disorders, which later on became more popular as the Kerner Commission,
after its chairman, Otto J. Kerner Jr.

While ruling
out any conspiracy, the commission identified racial
discrimination, poverty, high unemployment, poor & inadequate schools, poor
health care and sanitation as major contributing factors to the United
States' racial apartheid.

The early
& selective leakage of this report incited ferocious criticism from the White
community. Critics argued, that the report has blamed everyone except the
rioters. The opposition was so strong and intense that, Johnson not only
declined the request by commission members, but also took additional six months
to disseminate its findings to the public at large and put the issue in right
perspective, but he himself failed to act upon it.

- Advertisement -

The most
often quoted statement from the report, the prophetic value of which is only being
realized in recent times is:

"The United States is
moving toward two societies, one Black, and one White--separate and unequal"